Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, arrives to meet France’s President Emmanuel Macron after the “Tech for Good” Summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Wednesday, May 23, 2018. French President Emmanuel Macron seeks to persuade Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other internet giants to discuss tax and data protection issues at a Paris meeting set to focus on how they could use their global influence for the public good. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
Facebook announced Friday that it had suspended 82 pages, groups and accounts that originated in Iran for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” and sharing divisive political messages, including opposition to President Trump.
The accounts — some of which also had been removed from Facebook’s photo-sharing site, Instagram — do not appear to have “ties to the Iranian government,” but Facebook could not say for certain who was behind them.
The announcement — two weeks before the 2018 election — illustrates that malicious actors, potentially foreign governments, continue to use social media to push their preferred political narratives and sow social unrest online.
Better technology, and thousands of new employees on staff, have helped social media sites more quickly find and take down propaganda and other problematic content, along with a flood of fake accounts. But they face a scourge of disinformation that has become more global and sophisticated in the years since they discovered Russian operatives stirred tensions online in the runup to the 2016 presidential race, experts say.
The takedowns are Facebook’s second action targeting accounts with ties to Iran. In August, the social networking giant removed hundreds of profiles and pages on the site as well as photo-sharing service Instagram, some of which had ties to Iranian state media. Those accounts had posted content, created events and purchased ads that at times pushed political messages sympathetic to the Iranian government.
Other tech giants, including Twitter and Google-owned YouTube, took action in August remove accounts with Iranian ties. On Twitter, these Iran-linked accounts published more than 1 million tweets — and often masqueraded as foreign journalists and average U.S. citizens to amplify messages about regional political issues, according to an analysis performed by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Credit:Washington Post
via USAHint.com
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